


How Revelatory the Darkness

by fluffernutter8



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 11:34:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3935296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just your average "we’re stuck in the British equivalent of Target during the apocalypse" AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Revelatory the Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heykait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heykait/gifts).



> Some Wilko-related liberties taken.

Lily had thought she was the last one in the store. Usually Trish is the last one to leave before her, and they have just traded smiles as Trish leaves through the sliding door. But as Lily walks toward the locker room at the back, James Potter walks up beside her.  
  
He says nothing, doesn’t even really acknowledge her, and she refuses to feel uncomfortable with their echoing footsteps in the empty store. Because he’s James Potter, who gives a special smile when girls ask him where to find things, who ruffles his hair like it’ll make his bright red uniform shirt look less stupid, who’s probably here late because he’s a little obsessive about lining up the DVDs. They haven’t really spoken since he transferred from one of the stores across the city, although several times he’s headed her way with a smile of intent on his face. She finds herself urgently required elsewhere when he does. When she can, she tries to schedule her shifts so they won’t line up with James Potter’s.

They’re just getting to their lockers when James’s phone vibrates. Lily buries her annoyed expression in her locker; they’re not supposed to have their phones out of their lockers when they’re working, but that’s James Potter all over, acting like the rules don’t apply to him.

“Something’s wrong,” James says behind her. “Something’s happened.”  
  
She’s only heard him speak a half dozen times, but his voice sounds truly worried and it makes her ask, “What do you mean?” as she pulls her bag out and slams her locker.  
  
“Sirius just sent me this.” He holds up his phone so she can see.  
  
She doesn’t ask who Sirius is, or what the text means when it says “Mischief managed. Always,” because her own phone blinks on and vibrates immediately with texts. She turns from James’s phone and reads them: one from Marlene that says “look out, Lils,” from her mum that says “I love you.” But what gets her is the lonely bubble from Petunia, still in her phone as Tuney no matter how many times Marlene changes it to “the unlucky half of the Evans gene pool” or adds the cranky devil emoji. All it says is “Lily,” and she gets a chill as she scans the word a half dozen times, as if rereading it will make it different or provide an explanation.  
  
“Yeah, something’s wrong,” she says, swimming up from her own mind to look into James’s wide eyes.  
  
That’s when the lights go out. They don’t even look at each other as they turn on the flashlights on their phones and head toward the door.  
  
Outside it is darker than anything Lily has ever seen, darker than the monstrous inside of her closet when she was a little girl. James plants himself in front of the door. All the times she’s walked through them, read the scrolling instructions along the bottom to “push apart in case of emergency,” she had never really considered being there in case of emergency.  
  
“Wait,” she says suddenly as James digs his fingers into the center crevice. “We shouldn’t leave.”  
  
He pauses, looking at her patiently, fingers still buried between the doors. “What d’you mean? There are people out there, and we can’t help them if we don’t leave.”  
  
“We might not be able to help them if we do leave. We can set up triage here, we have supplies if people come looking. If we go out into it, we’d just be fumbling about with nothing.” He’s facing her fully now, having dropped his hands from the door. They dance around between his pockets, his phone, his hair. A million and one tics, James Potter, but she finds that it bothers her just a touch less at the moment. “You’re on the line between bravery and stupidity,” she says quietly, looking up at him. He has a bit of a prominent, stubborn jaw, and she almost wants to rest her fingers on either side- just the tips- and her thumbs on his chin, to cradle it like her mother would a mug she was examining for chips. “Come back to the right side.”  
  
He glances out the door once more, then sticks his phone firmly in his pocket. “Alright, we’ll wait, at least for now. I’m going to get some stuff. I’ll meet you by the jewelry case in a few.”  
  
He grabs a trolley and heads towards the housewares department. Lily watches him briefly before glancing at her phone once more. The internet doesn’t load, doesn’t even bring up her Google homepage, and when she goes to dial, the screen flashes  _Emergency calls only_. That’s strangely, minorly comforting, at least: the thought that there was someone out there answering at least the emergency calls. But being locked in a Wilko during the apocalypse with James Potter doesn’t exactly qualify, so she puts her phone into her sweater pocket and goes towards the camping gear.  
  
She gets back first, so by the time James wheels up with blankets and pillows and a load of water bottles, she has placed lanterns by the front doors and on either end of the jewelry case. She understands now why he chose this as a meeting spot: the case lights are battery powered, showing off the pieces to whatever cheap, glinting advantage they have. It looks a little like fairy lights for Christmas, but Lily finds herself appreciating the strong, sensible lantern light instead.  
  
She sits crosslegged against the jewelry case beside where she has placed her bag. James tosses her a pillow, and she sticks it wordlessly behind her back as he unpacks the rest of his trolley, placing bedding and water in neat stacks beside the two of them, reserving one pillow for his back while they wait. She can hear, beneath the squelch of plastic, the hum of the generator, powering the refrigeration equipment.  
  
_At least we’ll have something fresh for a little while_ , she thinks, unable to help it. She finds herself slightly off-put by how quickly she is adapting to this. An hour ago she was Lily Evans, shop assistant, but somehow she slipped easily into Lily Evans, apocalypse warrior.  
  
The last thing James takes out, tucked into the baby seat, is a small plastic wastebasket. Something makes a squeaky, pinging noise as he picks it up. “Do you mind?” he asks apologetically. “I’ll go barmy without something to do, and I don’t want to drain my phone.”  
  
She raises an eyebrow, clueless as to what he’s talking about, but that seems to be enough invitation. He sets the wastebasket a few feet away from them and scoops out of it a handful of the colored bouncing balls that they sell from a bin, six for a pound. He places the balls on the floor between them, lining them patiently in the grout groove of the tiles so they don’t roll. When they’ve settled, he plucks one up and bounces it so it lands in the basket. He does it twice more before she picks up a ball of her own, managing to get two bounces and a smooth leap into the basket. For the first time in a while, James grins at her.  
  
“Why do you work here?” she blurts as he picks up a new ball. She’s been wondering since the first day he’d transferred in, with his posh accent and his posture, upright but casual about it, not like when her gran used to flick her on the ear so she would sit iron-bar straight for five minutes before reverting to her usual vague slump.  
  
He does his bounce then goes to collect the balls and move the wastebasket a little farther away, for the challenge. “It was to prove something at first. I started university with nothing on my CV but a couple of internships my mum had me do with friends of hers in the summers, filing at wanky law firms, stuff like that, and everyone kept saying I had no idea what it was like. And I didn’t. But then,” he shrugs, sliding half-embarrassed down beside her, “I kind of liked it.”  
  
“Really, you like this?” Her voice gets loud in her disbelief. She’d never properly appreciated the height of these ceilings until she hears herself echoing rudely off of them.  
  
“I get to help people out and use a label gun. But I’m guessing this isn’t your dream job.” He says it lightly, closing one eye to aim right as he attempts to get two balls in simultaneously. One makes it, but the other goes astray.  
  
“Sure. I was the one little girl who used to get out the mop and pretend to be cleaning up baby vomit on aisle twelve while an old gent yelled at me. And I crossed my fingers and wished real hard and here I am.” She tries the double bounce as well, clenching her fist victoriously as they both make it.  
  
He looks at her, doubly disbelieving. “Maybe I’ll have you crossing your fingers for Liverpool, then.”  
  
“Nah, strictly a League Two girl. The triumph of the underdog.” She picks up a new ball but doesn’t toss it, just lets it circle her palm lazily. “You know, I thought the next time I would be filling up a trolley here it would include an AFC Wimbledon poster.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. Hoping to get my own place soon. Well,” she amends, “My own with flatmates. My friend Marlene and her girlfriend Viv are looking someone for their second bedroom. It’s going to be great, once I can afford to move in. And it’ll stop my sister from smirking at me for still living at home whenever she and her unfortunate husband come over to my parents’ for Sunday tea.” The remark comes out automatically from complaining about Petunia at dozens of sleepovers with Marlene, and she asks her next question hurriedly to cover the awkwardness she feels at the confession. “Do you have any siblings?”  
  
“Three brothers,” James says with a grin she can see even in the dim light. “Not blood brothers, but my best mates.” He pulls out his phone and shows her a picture: James, gangling and alight on the left, arm around a mild-looking guy who seems like he doesn’t get hugged often, but also like James’s arm slung over his shoulder is the best thing in the world. Beside him there’s a stout boy with sharp features, mouth open as if calling out a joke to the photographer, and bracketing the end, a bold, handsome boy who appears ready either to hit on her or challenge her to a duel even from the photo.  
  
James angles his thumb so the nail taps the screen. “Remus, Peter, and Sirius. We met at school up in Scotland. Same school house, same dorm for seven years. You either become a menace to each other, or you become family.”  
  
“And you guys got family.”  
  
“And a bit of menace to. They had to put a new section in our yearbook: best prank.” He goes to slide his phone away, the illumination from it dimming as his smile does. “They weren’t always kind pranks, though. We didn’t always stop when we should have. I regret that.”  
  
The way he tips his head back to rest on the glass case behind them so he doesn’t meet her eyes, and the memory of her own admission keeps her from asking more about that. “Do you still live together?” she asks instead.  
  
“Two and two,” he says, smile spreading back up his face. “Neighboring flats a few streets from here.”  
  
“Hope you and Sirius are separated.” She thinks of their unconquerable grins. “Looks like you two would be trouble without someone to keep you in line.”  
  
“Hey, I’ll have you know that Remus keeps piles of books around his bed that would probably get our place condemned if an inspector ever came to look, and Peter nearly burned the building down last time he tried to warm up some leftover Chinese takeaway.” She laughs at that, his stories and his indignation, laughs harder when he tells her that Sirius had stormed out of his room next to naked and groggily shouted at Peter that he wasn’t allowed to use the stove anymore (“If I wanted hot firemen in the flat, I’d buy a bloody calendar!”).  
  
After she’s settled a little, he asks, “Is it just you and your sister?”   
  
“Yeah.” The silence after the word isn’t uncomfortable, but she speaks into it anyway. “We don’t get on that well anymore, though.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“She says I think I’m special, and that I have my priorities wrong. I think her priorities are more whacked than mine, and that she lives a small life.”  
  
“What d’you mean?”  
  
“She’s just so…stuck. Like all she wants is to do her ironing, listen to the neighborhood gossip, and make her husband’s dinner. Like a time warp. She doesn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. I want to have a life, I want to travel. I can’t stand that I’ve only ever been to Cornwall, and Paris one time on a school trip.”  
  
He nudges her shoulder just a little, just a brush. “Place you most want to go?”  
  
“God.” She tucks her knees up and rests her chin on them as she considers. “Greece, maybe. Supposed to be absolutely gorgeous, with plenty of good ruins lying around. And I want to go to Salzburg for the Sound of Music tour.”  
  
“Been there,” he nods. “Loved it. We even went to twirl on Maria’s mountain a few miles away. Greece, I’ll hopefully get to this summer. I’m planning on doing a tour thing. Last summer before the real world, you know.”  
  
“Sounds amazing.”  
  
“Try not to drool.”  
  
She shoves at his shoulder. “Shut up. Your tongue would be on the floor if the situation was reversed.” He rocks exaggeratedly from the push, laughing. “What’re you studying anyway? Before the real world starts.”  
  
He drops his smile, face wiped into snobbishness so quickly that she thinks for a moment that the light must be going. “Law,” he says, chin raised just a little in pride.  
  
“Why, so you can work at one of the wanky law firms?” she asks, looking for her James again.  
  
He drops his chin, his grin returning easily. “Nah. I want to be a cop. Sirius and I are going to do it together.”  
  
She pictures him in a patrolman’s uniform. “Why a cop?” she says around a smile.  
  
“There are bad people out there. I want there to be fewer of them.” It sounds so simplistic, but she finds herself endeared by his shrug and the way he ruffles his hair even as he speaks so surely. Something smiles unwillingly in her stomach as she remembers the obvious way he spoke about helping people earlier, as if rushing out into the dark unknown was something anyone would do.  
  
“I feel safer already,” she says, teasing gently.  
  
“Yeah, what about you?” He’s jokingly petulant, elbowing her softly. “What’re you studying?”  
  
She tilts her chin up at him now, teeth showing. “Law. I want to work in domestic violence prevention.”  
  
For the first time in a while, James pauses to study her, looking serious. After another minute, he smiles again. “Lily Evans, helping the voiceless find their voices. I can see it.”  
  
She feels, quite acutely, the warmth of his arm lined up against hers. She hadn’t noticed how close they were sitting until now.  
  
She opens her mouth although she’s not sure what she wants to say, but in the silence there’s a sound like a huge, shaking gasp, and the world turns back on. They both sit blinking for a moment and then the doors slide open.  
  
James folds himself to his feet. “Sirius?”  
  
“Oh, the boys are going to hear about this,” says Sirius, striding over to them. He looks somehow more relaxed but more dynamic than he did in the picture. Lily pulls herself up as well, although it doesn’t do much good as she stands beside the two of them. “Chatting up a girl while we were shedding tears over our lost mate, gone to his untimely end in the middle of this plastic hell.”  
  
“What happened?” Lily demands before James’s indignation can make its way to his mouth. Sitting here with him, she’d almost forgotten about the unknown disaster that had brought them there to begin with.  
  
“They thought it was some kind of bioweapon, shut down the whole city while they tried to figure it out. Turned out to just be some poor slob from the National Health who didn’t shower right when he left the lab. Probably going to get hell from everyone he knows when they find out it was him who made us all think the world was ending.” His mouth spreads into a smile as he looks at Lily, and he drapes his arm around James. “Well, maybe not everybody.”  
  
“Sirius.” James sounds like he’s stepping on his friend’s foot with the word. “This is Lily Evans.”  
  
“Oh,” Sirius says, patting James on the chest with his other hand, “I assumed.”  
  
“Wha-” Lily starts.  
  
“Want us to walk you home?” James interrupts. Sirius squirms beside him, poorly attempting to contain a laugh. “I know you can make it on your own, but maybe we can see what’s open on the way, grab a bite.”  
  
“I could eat,” Sirius says, and James winds his own arm around his friend’s neck.  
  
“You can always eat.”  
  
Lily puts her bag up on the counter and goes to pick up the lanterns she had brought over. “Yeah, alright. Just let me put these back.”  
  
James bends and shoves the pile of blankets into Sirius’s arms. “We’ll see you back here in a few, then.”  
  
Lily looks over her shoulder at them as she turns into the camping supply aisle. James has bumped his shoulder into Sirius’s and Sirius bumped him back, so now they are each scrambling for little rubber balls the floor. Lily grins and shakes her head and goes to find the right shelf.  
  
Maybe from now on she won’t go out of her way to schedule her shifts so they won’t line up with James Potter’s. Just maybe spending a night on the floor, talking in the dark, means that she’ll do just the opposite.


End file.
